The raison d’être of library outreach isn’t to get students to attend events. It isn’t to sign them up for our newsletter or get them to follow us on social media. It isn’t even to get them to use library resources [insert pearl clutching]. The goal of library outreach is to start the conversation. It’s a handshake… maybe it becomes a bridge, but at its simplest, it’s an entry point. As an outreach librarian, my role is to build the door, to always keep it open, and (as far as my department’s time and resources permit) to continually find creative ways to build new thresholds for discovery. In the world of Monsters, Inc., I run the door factory (well, as it was at the end of the film with Sully and Mike in charge).
Students arrive at college with varying levels of academic preparation. There are first gen students, international students, students from small private high schools, students from rural communities, transfer students, students coming back to college later in life (as grad students or otherwise), and a dozen other common demographics to which we pay close attention. Regardless of where/when/how they show up, library outreach ensures that students start engaging with the system of scholarly inquiry early enough to be successful. We focus much of our energy on the early weeks, through orientations, resource fairs, open houses, and low-barrier events; but because we know students often wait until the point of need, our work is year-round. Always holding the door open. Always extending our hand.
The library offers early engagement with academic expectations, scholarly terminology, writing and research workflows, and habits that will sustain students for the length of their campus experience. Moreover, the means of that engagement exist in a space that is less intimidating than the classroom but nonetheless structured in ways that go beyond mere informal support.
Our work speeds students along their journey towards increased confidence, belonging, and perhaps most important of all: an ability to thrive in a specialized—perhaps even rarified—environment with its own special codes and customs. Library success leads to college success.
What I’m reading
‘Talk to My A.I. Twin’: Busy Executives Have a New Productivity Hack by Sarah Kessler: We all know where this is going, right?
No, Artificial Intelligence is Not Conscious by Ted Chiang: “The primary difference between deepfake photos and LLM conversations is that the people who generate the former are deliberately trying to fool others, and many of the people who elicit the latter from LLMs have inadvertently fooled themselves.”
The Shell University by Rory Truex. “If I’ve learned one thing this year, it’s that we need recenter the human part of the university: the student-teacher relationship.”
If there’s a single takeaway from all these articles, it’s that human connection is going to be the new “value add” for any university, business, or service. The rarity of that experience, in a market that’s surfeited in AI outputs (AIs talking to AIs talking to AIs), is only going to increase its desirability.
Links to the past
- 1 year ago: There were more mentions of AI than I remember.
- 5 years ago: I was doing more gardening than doom-scrolling. Can’t sat the same is true these days.
- 10 years ago: ““As long as Google has a commercial interest in appearing omniscient, it probably won’t work to improve knowledge panel transparency.” Still true.
- 15 years ago: Teaching college students how to manage personal information (beyond research needs) is still a worthwhile program to pursue.
Overheard online
“I can definitely walk and chew gum at the same time,” claims my LLM, as it lies bleeding on a pile of unchewed bubblegum. – @hotdogsladies on mastodon